It did not take long to search the house, but the Brothers Alpha were nowhere to be seen. “I can’t find the boys,” I said, rushing back to her. “Where were they the last time you saw them?”
“In the bedroom,” she said. “Please…get me some water.”
I rushed to the sink and started opening cabinets around it until I found a supply of glasses, and filled one up for her. She took the glass and tried to gulp it down, but the very act of drinking water seemed to cause her pain.
“You have to go to the hospital,” I told her.
“What about the boys?”
“They aren’t here. I’ll go look around outside, but when I come back, I’m calling 911 for an ambulance for you.” Dashing out of the house, I started called the twins’ names and then ran around to the back yard looking for them. The yard was not so big that anyone could hide, even a small child. Marcy did not have a garage either, only a driveway. I peered inside the car parked in the back, and saw it was empty, then circled back around front and called their names one more time.
The boys were nowhere to be found.
I was about to go back inside the house when a couple objects caught my eye, on the grassy parkway by the curb. They looked like things that had been dropped, and as I got closer to them, near enough to see what they were, a sick feeling began to form in my stomach. They were identical and about the size of an open wallet. I started to reach for one but then stopped, procuring a handkerchief from my back pocket and using it to shield my hand…and any prints that might be on the thing…before picking it up. Letters stenciled on it read “Sony PSP,” but I didn’t need the branding to tell me what it was, I had seen it often enough over the last few days. These were the handheld game consoles that the Alphas were never seen without, but now they were dropped on the ground like they’d been discarded or lost. While hanging onto the one, I carefully picked up its brother with hanky-wrapped fingers and then rushed back in the house.
“Did you find them?” I heard Marcy call even before I got to the kitchen. Once there, I saw that she was not able to stand up on her own, and she was refilling her glass from the sink.
“No, but these were out there.” I laid the game consoles down on the table.
“I don’t think I ever saw those out of their hands. Why would they be left lying around?”
“They wouldn’t, not of the boys had anything to say about it.”
“I don’t understand this, Dave.”
“Marcy, I think they’ve been abducted.”
ELEVEN
“Oh, Jesus God!” Marcy moaned, holding her head. “Abducted by who? And why?”
“I don’t know, but I think that the only reason they would leave these things behind was because someone forced them out of their hands. If they had simply gone for a walk, they would have carried them with them. We have to call Colfax, and this time he’d better get an Amber alert out.”
“I have kids for only one day…one freaking day…and they disappear.”
“This isn’t your fault,” I said, going to her. In the movies, whenever a man is trying to calm a hysterically sobbing woman, there are certain moves he invariably makes: caressing her face, wiping away her tears, holding her head in his masculine hands––
“OW! Shit!” Marcy cried in my ear as I held her head, remembering only after she screamed that she had been clubbed over the cranium.
Smooooooooooth, said the howling voice of Red Skelton, pretending to sell "Guzzler’s Gin,” inside my own damaged head.
“Sorry! Sorry!” I cried, to both of them. “Sheez, you’ve really got a lump.”
“Damn!” she said, feeling it herself. “Maybe I should go to the ER.”
“I agree, but let’s call the police first.” Fishing out my cell, I dialed 911 and reported an assault and apparent abduction, and gave Marcy’s address. But even before I had finished, a car pulled up in front of her house, and through the window I saw Detectives Dane Colfax and Hector Mendoza get out and head for the house. Colfax either retrieved him from the station, or Mendoza had been there at my house the whole time, but stayed hidden. Could he have been inside my apartment while Colfax was keeping me busy? I didn’t even want to think about it.
"Who’s out there?” Marcy asked.
“It’s the detective I told you might be coming,” I said, "and the trained pit-bull he travels with. He’s here to interview you as a witness to Nora’s death, not because of the assault.”
“Witness? I didn’t see anything.”
“Not eyewitness, Marcy, just a witness. A concerned party who might have information.”
She put her arms around me. In a different, far more preferable, situation, it might have been called an embrace, but now I understood she was hanging on for dear life. “You’ll help me get through this, won’t you Dave?”
“I’ll help you get through anything you want,” I said, perhaps not too wisely, but too well. The doorbell rang and Marcy gave me a look that I could not interpret, although I managed to project into it something like: I love you and I want to massage your feet every night and cook for you and spend each weekend in a hot tub with you and––
She pulled away suddenly. "Are you getting a hard-on?” she demanded.
"What? Oh, no, that’s, uh, my phone.”
She broke away and went to answer the door, while I fought down an adolescent blush and forced my iPenis to stop ringing.
Detective Dane Colfax introduced himself and Mendoza, and after ascertaining that she was Marcella DeBanzi, asked to come in. Then he looked up and saw me. “Jesus Christ,” he groaned. “Are you sure you’re not twins, too, Beauchamp? No one person could get in our way this much. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Helping Marcy, who was coshed on the head,” I said. “The boys are missing, too. The local police are on their way here.”
“You trying to go over our heads?” Mendoza growled.
Wouldn’t calling the locals be going under your head? I heard Groucho say, and repeated it aloud for him.
I could see Mendoza desperately trying to come up with a retort, but for whatever reason, words failed him. Maybe his anger short-circuited his tongue.
“Hopefully the locals will call for an Amber alert,” I added.
“I seem to recall you trying to convince me to put out an Amber on those two once before, and it turned out they were safely with their nanny the whole time,” Colfax said. “Why should I give you any credence this time?”
“Because I think we can rule the nanny off the suspect list this time,” I said. "Whoever the boys are with took them against their wills.”
“How do you know that?” Mendoza shot back.
“Because their game players were discarded on the street.”
“What game players?”
“The ones you never saw the boys without. Even when they ate, they took bites in between plays. They probably slept with them.”
“They took them into the bedroom with them last night,” Marcy said.
“So,” I went on, "I’m having a hard time imagining that they would simply put them down on the sidewalk for safekeeping. Either they dropped them while being abducted, or whoever it was that took them tossed the gizmos aside.” As I was speaking, the first police siren was heard.
“Where are these things?” Colfax asked.
“Right here,” I said, pointing them out.
“You picked them up and moved them?” Mendoza shouted.
“I used a handkerchief, so if there are any prints on them, they’re still there and uncorrupted.”
“But you might have destroyed other evidence by taking them from their original location,” Colfax said, more calmly.
“What kind of amateur asshole are you?” Mendoza queried.
“One who’s planning on taking the test to be a professional asshole, so I can join the LAPD.” Sheez! Where did that come from?
Mendoza took a step toward me but Colfax reached out and grabbed his arm. “He’s
not worth it, Hector,” he said.
“Look fellows,” I said, “you can slam me against a wall all you want, but this lady needs to go to the hospital and get checked out, and the boys have to be found.”
The sirens were getting louder.
“Ma’am,” Colfax said, “are you able to answer a couple questions before you go?”
“I think so,” Marcy said.
His questions turned out to be the fairly generic: did you see anybody, hear anything, anyone want to hurt you, yada yada yada, though there was one that I had not anticipated. “Has Mr. Beauchamp done anything to you, or has he coerced you to do or say anything?”
Marcy looked shocked. “Dave? No, of course not! He found me unconscious. He’s helped me. He has tried to help the boys.”
“Detective, get serious,” I said. “Why would I have called the police each time if I were responsible for any of this?”
“I’m not talking to you now, I’m talking to her,” Colfax snapped. “Ma’am, what do you think happened to the boys?”
“I just don’t know. I agree with Dave, though. They wouldn’t leave their palm pilots, or whatever those things are called, just lying around on the ground if their absence was innocent.”
The ambulance was now pulling up in front of the house.
“Who would want to abduct or harm them?”
“I don’t know,” Marcy moaned. “There was a strange man hanging around last night. Maybe he had something to do with it.”
“A strange man?” said Mendoza, who had that ability to make every sentence he uttered sound like an accusation. “What strange man?”
“I don’t know! There was someone hanging around outside.”
At that moment a voice hollered into the house: “Paramedics.”
“In here,” Colfax said, and two uniformed EMTs rushed inside. Upon ascertaining that Marcy did not need to be strapped onto a gurney, they walked her to the front door. But at the door she turned back. “Can you come to the hospital with me, Dave?”
“Not yet,” Colfax shot back. Then to the EMTs he asked, “Where are you fellows taking her?”
“Peninsula,” one of them called back.
Assuming Peninsula to be a hospital or medical center, as opposed to a finger of land sticking out into the ocean, I told Marcy that I would be there as soon as possible. Then I watched as the paramedics walked her out and helped her inside the back of the ambulance. Before it could speed away, though, a police car arrived and joined the collection of city vehicles out front. Two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, knocked on the open door and were asked in by Detective Colfax, who flashed his badge at them.
“So what’s going on?” one of the cops asked.
“I made the 911 call,” I announced, and then did my best to try and fill them in on what had happened…at least what I believe to have happened…to the Brothers Alpha.
“Are you two already on the case?” the uniform asked Colfax and Mendoza. He looked a bit confused.
“We’re out of Northeast,” Colfax explained. “We’re investigating the murder of the sister of the woman who was just taken to the hospital. The sister had two kids, twins, who appear to have disappeared, and those kids had a nanny who was also murdered.”
“You keep characterizing her that way, but Elena wasn’t really a nanny,” I said. "She was Nora’s assistant.”
One of the uniforms, a thickset, steely-eyed guy with a Marine haircut, who reeked of cigarette smoke, and whose nametag identified him as Officer Fillmore, looked at me and asked, “Who did you say you are?”
“I’m a private investigator who…you know, officer, this is going to take a couple minutes or so to explain.”
Turning to the uniforms, Colfax said, “You two go ahead and take his statement about the presumed abduction. We’ll stay out of your way, but let us know when you’re done. We still have business with him.” He led Mendoza outside.
The other uniform was young African-American woman named Baker, who must not have been long out of the Academy, because she appeared to do everything as though following a checklist. “May I see some ID, sir?” she asked politely, and I handed over my driver’s license, which he quickly scrutinized. “Thank you. Now, sir, could you tell us what you know about this.”
Fillmore remained silent but menacing as I once more recounted the events leading up to my discovery of Marcy. My earlier estimation was wrong; it did not take a couple minutes. It took ten. When I was done and there were no more questions, Fillmore chimed in. “What about this strange man the lady said was hanging around?” he asked. “Any idea who it might be?”
Elena Cates’ boyfriend? I thought, but had no evidence of that one way or the other. “I did not see anyone first hand, so I have no idea who it might have been, if anyone.”
“Are you saying you don’t believe there was a strange man?”
“I saw no one, that’s all I know.”
“There no way it was you, is there?”
“Me? Officer, if I had seen myself lurking around the house in the dark I would have recognized me.”
“A comedian,” Fillmore sighed, glaring at me. “Swell.”
“No, I was not the man Marcy saw. I was not here at the times she reported seeing him. Before she was assaulted, I was willing to believe there was no man at all, only her imagination acting up. But now.…”
“Now what, sir?” Officer Baker asked.
“Look, someone had to hit her! She couldn’t have done it herself. And the boys are missing. They’re only twelve so they can’t drive, and I don’t think they have bikes, at least not here. Maybe they’re just walking around, but I think somebody snatched them.”
“Have you got a picture of them?”
“Not on me, no, and I don’t think there are any here, because the boys only showed up last night. Maybe there’s something in their backpacks in the bedroom, but if that doesn’t pan out, you’ll have to go to their mother’s house, or possibly the Internet.”
“Go check out the backpacks, Rebecca,” Fillmore said his Baker immediately headed to the bedroom. Then turning to me, he said: “I’m going to have a chat with the detectives. You stay here.” It was very difficult not to reply, Sir, yes, sir! as he strode out of the house.
Fillmore may have told me to stay put, but he did not specify that I had to remain in place at attention. Since I was interested in learning as much as I could about Marcy DeBanzi, albeit for different reasons than those of the police, I started looking around. The front room contained no clues as to her life and history, save for the fact that she appeared to like medical thrillers. Several such novels lined a built-in bookshelf. Making certain that I was still unobserved by any of the policemen, I moved into the kitchen to carry out my refrigerator theory of research, the one that says you can learn more about a person from their fridge than any other source.
The outside of Marcy’s fridge had only a couple things stuck to it with plain round magnets, chiefly a fading Sunday Zitz comic strip referencing a dermatologist, and more than a dozen coupons for restaurants. On the side against the wall was a postcard. Fishing it out, I saw it was a reminder for a dentist appointment dated late last year. Obviously Marcy had lost track of it. I stuck it back in its hiding place. Taking a quick look inside the fridge, I discovered very little: a loaf of bread (and only people who don’t eat very much bread keep it in the fridge), some coffee creamer, margarine, little tubs of pudding, and three cans of diet Dr. Pepper. The overall impression was that, like me, Marcy did not like to cook or eat at home much. In a perfect world we’d be eating beautiful take-out together.
Closing the fridge I went over to the sink to get a glass of water. I’d been talking to the cops for several minutes on end and was a bit dry. Glancing out the window as I drank, I saw something that caused me to inhale a drop of water and begin choking.
Dropping the glass, which shattered in the sink, I tried calling for Officer Baker, or anyone, but couldn’t summon up the wind power. I
nstead I continued to gasp and kept looking out the window and the dark figure peering over the wall at the back of Marcy’s property.
A strange man, who was looking directly at me.
TWELVE
Officer Baker was the first to arrive in the kitchen. “I heard something break,” she said. Fillmore came next, followed by Colfax and Mendoza. I was still choking.
“Somebody try to kill you, too?” Mendoza asked, a note of hopefulness in his voice. I was tempted to flip him off, but under the circumstances it didn’t seem wise.
“Out there,” I managed to get out, gesturing to the window.
“What’s out there?” Colfax asked.
“Strange…man.”
Fillmore was the first one through the back door, with Baker in tow, while the detectives stayed with me and peered through the window. Of course, whoever had been there was now gone. When I recovered enough of my voice to speak, I said: “Someone was out there by the fence, looking this way.”
“Describe him,” Colfax ordered.
“Dark hair, bearded, nondescript clothes.”
“It could have been somebody who lives there, you know,” Mendoza said, “somebody who actually belongs in the neighborhood.” The continuation of that thought, Unlike you, hovered silently in the air around us.
“You’re right, it could have been,” I said. “But he was looking straight at me. It startled me. That’s why I choked.”
Baker came back into the house. “No sign of anyone. If someone was out there, he’s vanished.”
“Or ran inside his own house,” Mendoza said.
“What’s wrong with all of you?” I shouted, a little more forcefully than I had intended to. As a rule I’m not the kind of person who loses his temper, but I had been pushed nearly to the limit. “Look, we can stand here and argue over whether there really is a peeping tom out there somewhere or whether it is just a neighbor, but that isn’t going to find the boys. Now are you going to call in their disappearance or not?”
Kill the Mother! Page 11